


The Turning Point

by love2imagine



Category: White Collar
Genre: Changes..., Starts out as canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-09 02:56:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1966320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/love2imagine/pseuds/love2imagine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Starts out with Peter searching for Neal after end of S5, but then everything blows up in his face...everything.</p><p> </p><p>Spoilers for end of Season 5 and various bits throughout.  White collar characters and basic story-line belong to Jeff Eastin, not me. This story mine, mistakes mine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Turning Point

Peter slipped across the grass as silently as a stalking black panther, dressed all in black, his face striped with black paint, his weapon in hand. The moon was setting behind the large bulk of the building. Apart from small rustlings in the bushes behind him and a night bird calling somewhere, it was as silent as anywhere outside of a windless desert.

Peter wasn’t praying because he didn’t believe in things like that. He believed in hard work, discipline, dedication. His team had thrown all that and more at this case, for months. The Bureau turned a blind eye: they never liked to send the message that one of their own, even a consultant, could be taken without repercussions.

This had to be it. He couldn’t face it if it wasn’t. But chances were he wasn’t here. His body was probably rotting in some forest somewhere…

**_NO!_ **

Something in Peter rebelled completely; he tasted bile at the back of his throat. He couldn’t imagine that light, beautiful, mischievous, creative man snuffed out. Then he realised he was thinking of the Neal he’d first met, even first got out of prison on work-release. The Neal he’d last seen had his lightness and mischief dimmed.

When Neal had disappeared, Peter’s first thought was that he had run. Neal had every reason to run. He’d been let down by so many people, including Peter himself, his hope of living a normal life in New York – or anywhere in the States – had been dashed by the Director of the Bureau, what was there left?

He was facing a future where he would be tossed from one handler to another, like a child ward of the State moved to one awful foster family after another: none of them friends, people prepared to use him for his skills and put him at risk till he did something they didn’t like and landed up back in prison – and that would be certain death – or he’d be put in a position with too little backup and too little training, and some trigger happy goon or excitable probie would put a bullet in him and Peter would get an impersonal memo….

Peter had dealt with the marshals, all wanting blood, and had tried to put them off the scent. Damn it, Neal deserved a life, even a life on the run was better than the alternatives. He had also made sure that they didn’t go near June’s. He’d been there, of course, and she was as mad as a snake with him.

Mozzie had contacted El. A slap in his face for the way he’d treated Neal, and who could blame him? – And he wasn’t terribly friendly towards El, either, but had been forced to ask: Where’s Neal? Has Peter got him on some stupid assignment, and why weren’t we informed?

It slowly filtered through the rather denser minds of law enforcement that Neal had not run away but had been kidnapped, abducted, whatever. And most of them shrugged and pointed out that he was near the end of his sentence, he’s a criminal, got better things to do.

But to White Collar he was family. Diana came to him, furious and frightened for her friend. “Peter! Do you know what Vice is saying? ‘Good riddance!’ After all Neal did for the department, especially for us – you have to stop them! We have to find him!”

Peter agreed, but that was easier said than done. They’d chased down leads and put out BOLO’s and done everything they could.

Mozzie, on his end, gave up all code phrases and specific meeting places so that he could meet with Diana regularly – he wouldn’t talk to Peter – and give her anything he’d heard and hear what they had, which was practically nothing.  
Greater love…

Elizabeth, when it was clear that Neal hadn’t run, and was lost rather than killed, gave up her job in DC and came home to him and made sure he was fed, and clothed and held him as she told him over and over, “You’ve always found him. You’ll find him again.”  
Greater love….

Nothing really helped. There was nothing. Mozzie became convinced that Neal had been abducted by aliens. Peter began to think it might be true. No adult male should be able to vanish and stay vanished with the kind of man-hunt he had going on. Surely there’d be some new, beautiful forgeries? Some new counterfeit Euros? …A body?

Hughes used his contacts and leaned on people and made sure that anything that seemed a bit odd or out of place was channelled through to WC. And they followed up some weird tips that came in and did break up a ring of bright young things making very good fake fashion accessories, and other less interesting cases, but no sign of Neal.

 

And then there was this tip about a truck where there should be no truck. It had been called in by a strange, hairy little man who wanted them to stop the truck coming to the area again as he’d been filming floating lights and alien crafts over the area for fifteen months, it was perfect because it was so dark at night. And now some idiot with a truck?

Peter kept his number. When all this was over and Neal was safe, he’d give it to Mozzie. It seemed they might be soul-mates.

However, the guy had a point. On satellite photos there was a large building, surrounded by smaller buildings mostly buried by trees, on a very over-grown farm track in the middle of a large area of undeveloped land. A truck had driven up to the buildings and driven away, and that was it. For the fifteen months he back-tracked, nothing showed, and then the truck, and since, nothing.

The tip had gone to Organised Crime, for the simple reason that Scully and Mulder had resigned years ago and their department closed down. Organised Crime had looked at it and said it looked anything ** _but_** organised, where was the crime, and passed it on to WC. There were no heat signatures, and though it might be a deluxe marijuana grow-op, or drug lab, even those have vehicles bringing supplies and taking away product now and then!

Organised Crime was used to tankers full of drugs, containerloads full of weapons, boatloads of cash, cartridge casings by the thousands, dead bodies by the score. Give it to those cissies at White Collar, who had time to be concerned about one missing CI who was probably sipping cocktails in St Barts and laughing at them. Those guys didn’t know what trouble really was!

 

Peter came up against the building. Jones was two steps behind him. If Neal was here, and especially if he was hurt, the people who had taken him were about to find out what trouble really was! Every available agent Peter could rustle up had joined Diana and Jones and all his team, and they were either converging on the various buildings with a careful plan in place, or they were in parked vans, a little way off to avoid detection, with every available piece of surveillance technology, some of it experimental, pointed at the buildings from different directions. They could pick out individual mice and voles in the fields! An owl floated by like a glowing wraith.

With all that, not a sound.

They’d canvassed the area. No one knew who owned the building and land. No-one had seen anyone there for years. (The deed was held by an off-shore investment company, which seemed hopeful, though hardly probative. It may be genuine, trying to buy up enough land for a large development.)

  
No cameras had caught anything, the truck might be seen as a passing flash, but it hadn’t stopped for fuel anywhere in the area. Traffic cameras on routes leading to and from the area hadn’t caught any sign of a truck for seventy-two hours before or after the hairy man had seen the head-lights… it was all just weird!

Peter picked the large lock with the tools and the training Mozzie had given all of them. _Neal would have been – Neal would be – Neal **will be** proud!_ It was a big lock and in good condition for an abandoned old barn-warehouse-packing-shed, whatever this was. Peter felt a bit of hope.

He eased the door open and went in, letting Jones close it softly after them. He fiddled a moment with his night-vision ‘goggles’: they looked sleeker than older versions, but weren’t any more comfortable. The corridor in which he found himself was built of concrete block in like-new condition. There were no cobwebs or dried leaves. It felt like a factory after hours, everyone had left but it wasn’t deserted. He came to a door and a set of stairs. Reasoning told him that it was far easier to hide noise and heat at lower depths, and he followed the staircase down, one shoulder and one hip advanced, gun held firmly but not tightly.

Jones opened the door quietly and went through it.

Another corridor, another staircase. And another. Peter was getting turned around; there was no sound other than his careful footfalls. There were rooms off the corridors on the lower levels, but they had nothing in them but empty shelves on the walls and the odd discarded box. He began to feel strange.

_Probably CO2 build-up down here, my brain is lacking oxygen, like in sewers. Heavier than air, colourless, odourless…_

And then there was a room that felt different. He eased into it as he had all the others that had closed doors, and he couldn’t see anything because there was a room divider in front of him. He listened. He couldn’t hear anything, and yet some part of his body registered that there was something alive in the room. He was on such high alert that parts of his body were aching with it. He was used to that, it didn’t bother him, part of the job. But part of this wasn’t part of the job. Part of this was his heart.

_Please let him be here! Please let me find him! Please let me put everything right! Please, please!_

My God, Burke, was that a prayer? _Yes, yes, damn it, it was a prayer! I’m that desperate! Please, let me find him!_

He moved carefully round the divider and there, back in the shadows, was a chair with a man taped to it. His heart leapt. The head was lolling – drugged? You don’t tape a dead man to a chair. Unless…but there was no smell. An awful thought, but hugely comforting. He stepped forward and under his foot there was a tiny movement as he stepped onto a large piece of plywood, a tiny _!crack!_ \- and Neal’s head came up, his pale face a mask of utter terror:

 ** _“Get back! Get back! It’s a time bomb!”_** \- and the world exploded blindingly in light and pressure.

…           …              …

 

Peter came to and tried to cough. He was in total, dreadful darkness and silence. When he opened his eyes dust fell in them…and he couldn’t wipe it away. He blinked madly, his eyes feeling too dry to tear.

He gasped, **_“Neal!”_** but we wasn’t sure he’d hear if anyone shouted, and wasn’t sure Neal would hear if he did.  
_Neal…_

Peter tried to move. He was lying on his back and could feel very little. He couldn’t move his feet, or his legs or his arms. He could – just – turn his head from side to side. His head hurt. Nothing else hurt.

_If I’m this badly damaged, and Neal was – where was the bomb? Near Neal? On Neal? Beneath Neal? Did I just kill my best friend? And where had Jones been in relation to this?_

He lay there in the dark. It was so quiet. Would the first sounds, those of the machinery digging to find them, would they come too late for him, for Neal, to hear?

_El!_

_But I’m alive!_

_Perfect. Minutes after I kill my best friend and already I have survivor’s guilt. Or maybe not minutes? How long was I unconscious?_

The very problem with the unconscious state is that one has no awareness. Could be seconds, could be days.

And Neal, dead or alive somewhere in a room he couldn’t see, in a silence he couldn’t break, probably didn’t think of him as a friend, anyway. Their ending had been awkward, trying too hard.

“Come and see us in DC.”

“I’ll be the house-guest that never leaves.”

Peter was reasonably sure that Neal would visit once or twice and then fade away. After he’d blasted him with angry words over those bloody gold coins, it had never seemed the same. And what was a mountain of gold compared to a friend? Peter felt himself losing consciousness…not a good thing. _Probably bleeding into my brain, cheerful stuff like that. Fall asleep, never wake up._

 

 

***                ***                       ***

 

 

**_“I did it for you!”_ **

Peter bit back the furious tirade. “Wait – you did it – oh, _**God!”**_

Neal backed up a step, two, three, dashed tears from his eyes. “My father set you up, oh, on the spur of the moment, he couldn’t have planned it, but he didn’t have the guts to take the rap, and no-one could find him and – and if you’d been indicted you’d have lost your job and with the evidence you’d almost certainly have gone to prison. For a long time. Or not so long, since you’re a Fed. Maybe not long at all.”

“You’d better start at the beginning.”

They sat, not close, a room and an abyss between them, while Neal filled Peter in on all the work he’d done for Hagen. Across the room, drooping in his chair, Neal didn’t once look up. He was giving Peter enough to put him away forever. Several forevers. Once Peter asked if he’d had any help and Neal shook his head. “Just me.” Peter went to him and pulled him against him and, after a moment of resistance, Neal leaned gratefully. Neal had been carrying all this all alone for far too long.

Then Peter thought, and asked Neal about Rebecca – how had they met?

_A pretty woman, just where Neal needed her to be, and his one weakness…?_

Neal looked up, then, aghast. “Mozzie vetted her.”

Peter told him that everything was on hold while they sorted this out; this was bigger than he’d imagined. “We’ll sort it out, somehow. Don’t tell anyone else what you’ve told me. And if Mozzie was involved, I don’t want to know, I don’t want to see him. If I don’t see him, I can’t ask him any questions. Keep him dark, Neal. Keep him safe. We have enough to worry about.”

Mozzie didn’t have access to all the resources of the FBI, and they soon found who Rebecca was. Neal stared at her photograph, absolutely shocked, but his artist’s eye couldn’t avoid the fact that Rachel was Rebecca.

Peter told Diana and Jones that he and Neal had been working on taking down Hagen and Rachel, collecting evidence, and apologised for not keeping them in the loop. Neal smiled a little, afterwards. “I’m a bad influence, that was **_good!”_**

Neal continued to con ‘Rebecca’, Peter even thought he continued to sleep with her. Mozzie, with some associates, followed her and solved the puzzle of Cooper 3. When she was ‘kidnapped’, they moved in and took both her and Hagen down. Peter went with Hagen to his rooms, pretending to go along with his attempt to make a bargain and forced him to give him all the evidence he had on Neal. All Hagen’s protests sounded like attempts to justify himself. Which they were.

Neal laughed at Hagen and told him he was a good artist, but that he and Peter ran a better con! Hagen’s face twisted into a look of fury and despair.

Rebecca – Rachel – interestingly enough didn’t make any excuses.

Peter hadn’t taken any notice of Haversham scuttling around like a squirrel hoarding for the winter, carrying off a sheaf of strange, meaningless sigils from Hagen’s lair. Hagen was always strange, and as for Mozzie…!

 

Later, when the Director wouldn’t release Neal, that same Haversham, now attired in a suit that even Peter could tell was a custom-made work of art, and followed by several shoals of legal sharks in a feeding frenzy, descended on DC.

  
Peter hadn’t seen this role of Haversham, this totally confidant, conspicuous and cocky, power-wielding luminary. It was easily more confounding than the majority of Neal’s masks! The mountain of paperwork they filed landed heavily enough to tip even the warped Scales of Justice and very suddenly, Neal was free.

Working together, trusting each other, keeping secrets for each other had brought Neal and Peter back to a level of friendship they could build on. Neal was free, Peter had commendations for his work bringing in Hagen and the notorious and hithertofore untouchable Rachel. There was a party. Jones, Diana, Mozzie and Neal joined El and Peter at their home and drank some of the best wine that could be had, and ate wonderful food that El had catered. They laughed and congratulated each other, and didn’t ask about too many details.

Not then, nor in any of the years as they grew even closer, did Peter ever ask where the money for not only the suit but all the legal muscle had come from for actions on Neal’s behalf. A good officer of law and order knows better than to ask a question to which he doesn’t want to know the answer….

 

** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **

 

Peter came back to consciousness. It was still dark. He remembered he’d been dreaming, a happy dream. He tried calling out, but there was nothing. Dark, silent. He felt himself fading. It wouldn’t be long now. He’d be joining his friend. Somewhere…he found tears leaking from his otherwise dry and dusty eyes and couldn’t even wipe them away.

 

*** *** ***

 

The air was filled with the smell of acrid burning, organic material, accelerant – Neal was trying to explain that this was _art,_ not just monetary value, he’d never blow it up…

Peter’s gut told him that no-one blows up priceless treasure, even though he knew the explosives were unstable...he instinctively turned to, as Neal once called himself, the ‘felon on the scene’ and accused him. Neal, his expression disbelieving, snarled back, “Then prove it!” and turned away from him.

Peter saw the piece of burning painting. He knew Neal could have done it. But – but they were friends. Neal said he never lied, and even though his words might be ambiguous, his expression hadn’t been. Neal was **_hurt_**. Hurt that Peter could think that of him. Okay, he could act, could Neal. But when Peter calmed down, he found Neal and took him into a room and sat him down.

“No surveillance, no recordings, I promise. I have nothing. I found this,” he said, and showed Neal the piece of painting, enclosed in a simple plastic bag.

If Neal was covering the biggest heist in history – or something close – he was doing a very good job. He looked at it and looked up at Peter. “It looks like mine.”

“Yeah, it does.”

“B-but…”

“But I have decided to trust you. You tell me, no sort-ofs or maybes or deflects or evasions…just tell me you had nothing to do with the destruction or theft of this treasure. Just say it.”

Neal said it. His bright blue eyes connected with Peter’s and he said, “I had nothing to do with destroying or stealing what we call ‘the U-boat treasure’.”

“Okay.”

**_“Okay?”_ **

“Yeah, you say you never lie to me. I’ve decided that you’re more important than the treasure, no matter what happened to it. I’ll let the forensics’ team work on the …remains?...and we’ll investigate further, together.”

Neal looked away, and Peter steeled himself. Would this cause Neal to confess?

Neal stood swiftly, turning with such a look of joy on his face that Peter’s breath caught, and threw his arms round Peter and hugged him tightly. Taken aback, Peter had to take a step to steady himself, then he wrapped his arms round Neal and they hugged and breathed together for several minutes.

“You’ve never said that before!” Neal whispered. “And to do it now when you have every reason _**not**_ to trust me…I was off anklet, it’s a score of a century, you found something that could be mine and didn’t enter it into evidence. Oh, Peter, do you know what this means to me?”

Peter, all choked up himself, managed, “I’m beginning to.”

They broke apart and Peter made a bit of a face. “Do you have an alibi? Not for me, but people will ask.”

Neal nodded, grinning. “Believe it or not, Sara. I was with her – you can check.”

“Yeah, I’ll have to. I’m glad, makes things easier.”

Neal went home walking on air, and Peter went home to tell El and she went all weepy about this lovely moment, and he had to remind himself who he was, as he started to feel very weepy, too.

They never did find the treasure. Remains of paintings and gold and other materials they knew should be there were there. Some metal artefacts came through relatively unscathed, it had been the explosives that detonated, no-one could say why but all the ballistics experts shook their heads and said things like, “Dangerous stuff! Foolish to leave it. Should have called us in.” They couldn’t seem to understand that it hadn’t been in the hands of the good guys when it had exploded!

Neal was happier than Peter had ever seen him, though he caught him looking wistful now and then. Peter and El made a point of inviting him over more often and he became a true friend. They shared many happy times together, went on to solve case after case, their win rate growing slowly even higher with their faith in each other. That moment of trust was the crossroads for Neal and, other than June, he dropped all contacts with his past, and he joined the Bureau as a full-time paid consultant when his sentence was over, on the understanding that he would continue to work with Agent Burke.

Peter never asked if the two were related, but he never saw Mozzie again. He never asked if Neal kept in touch. He never asked where Mozzie had gone, or why. He truly didn’t want to know, and honestly, didn’t much care. He was too contented with his life to care.

 

*** ***                  *** ***                    *** ***

 

Peter woke to pounding in his head. For a moment he thought that rescue was at hand, but he realised that no, this was internal. He tried moving, calling out, but he’d been hurt severely before and knew when the tides of life ceased to flow and started to ebb. Unless help reached him very soon, he wasn’t going to make it.

It surprised him a little that he had no fear, despite his unshriven state. He wasn’t even sure if there was anything else after death with his reasoning mind. But inside he was sure he’d have a chance to apologise to Neal for all the mistakes and mistrust and callous behaviour. Remembering some of them, he would have winced if he could have.

He should have left Neal in prison. He’d have done his time and be a free man which, after Peter had ‘helped him’ and after his success at the FBI, he never would have been. How ironic! Now the supposed good guy and the man society designated a ‘criminal’ would die together, perhaps twenty feet apart, a million miles apart, too many misunderstandings apart.

He wasn’t scared. Regretful. About how he’d left many things with Neal. About El. About his team. But he was too tired to be scared. Just very, very tired.

 

***                           ***                               ***

 

The early morning sun had a lightness and sparkle that the same glaring sun in the city never had. Peter stretched and carefully went through his gear, sure he’d forgotten something. He settled his father’s old fishing hat, the one his mom always said smelt like every fish that ever died, on his head and started off down to the lake. He tried to come here at least once a year, but these last few years had been hectic…but now he was more settled in the Bureau and he had taken two weeks off, tacked onto the end of a long holiday weekend.

He piled everything into the boat and pushed off, delighting in the feel of it resting, swaying on the bosom of the lake. Some birds were making a territorial racket in the trees. He felt every muscle relax.

Even if he hadn’t enjoyed fishing and being outdoors, every time he came here, every time he baited a hook, every time he set a cooking fire, it felt as though it was a homage to his father and all the times they shared - and their love, mostly unspoken, but palpable.

He discovered what he had forgotten during the day, and as he picked up his gear and the pretty stringer of fish, he promised himself that tomorrow he’d take a Vitamin B1 tablet and use some insect repellent as well! But he was almost drowsy with being in the fresh air after so long, and languid with lack of stress. He started up the path towards the cabin and stopped.

 

Suddenly he was on high alert.

 

Slowly and silently, he placed everything down on the path and moved towards the cabin, a strong sense of déjà vu combining with warning bells.

Someone was in the cabin. He knew it. He couldn’t hear anything, everything looked normal, but he was sure!

He knew he would reach the door, hear a small sound and burst in yelling, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” and then, belatedly remembering, “Stop! FBI!”

But the small man, woman or tall child would be out of the tiny window before his eyes could accustom to the gloom. Nothing would be taken, nothing would seem disturbed except he was sure he’d locked the door when he left. He remembered it because his dad would always josh him, “City boy! Who’s round here, anyway, and what is there to steal?”

He’d always had a good intuition, but this was weird. He moved towards the door. He heard a small sound. He eased the door open and slipped inside as quiet as quiet.

There was a teenager going through the things on the dresser. He was shaking, and it wasn’t from drugs. He had the grandmother of all poison ivy or oak rashes all over his arms and hands.

Peter said, quietly and calmly, “I have some calamine lotion in the bathroom, and some other stuff in the fridge my dad always swore by.”

The boy – perhaps fifteen at a push, probably a tall thirteen – spun round. Peter went on, “No, it’s okay, you needed help and came looking for it. Look, kid, let me help you…that stuff can be really nasty and even dangerous.”

Peter’s trained mind took in the details without seeming to: thin, dark untidy hair with some curl to it, narrow face, blue eyes, tatty short-sleeved shirt, blue-jeans, sneakers. Clothes clean but old.

 _Abused?_ Peter’s mind added: the boy looked too nervous, like a colt about to bolt at the first wrong move, too much white showing around the blue irises.

“I’ve got some good stuff, my dad always made it every year and I did last year even though I wasn’t here for long. There’s too much poison ivy and oak in these woods. You shouldn’t walk through here without knowing what they look like!” He moved calmly forward, diagonally, keeping some distance between himself and the boy, and opened the fridge door. “It’s been kept cold.”

He could see that the boy had blisters on his neck and even part of his face. “What did you do, roll in it?”

“I know what poison ivy and oak look like, Mister,” the boy said. “It wasn’t those.” _Soft twang. Southerner._

“Sumac? But that’s a tree!”

“I don’t know that. What’s it look like – oh, God, it hurts! It’s so itchy and – I know you’re supposed to wash it off, but I couldn’t bring myself - ”

“Yeah, cold water and soap – but you are way too long gone for washing it off, kid! You have to do that before you look like a blistered plucked chicken!”

The boy grinned a little. “I’m sorry for chicken from now on!”

“Hey, I know. Look, you’ve probably got the oil all over your clothing, I don’t want any on me and you don’t need any more – take them off, would you? I’ve got some clothes, won’t fit but won’t add to your discomfort, either! Let me help!”

Peter got all the outer clothes off the boy, wearing fishing gloves – the smell of which made the boy wrinkle his nose – and shoved them in a large rubbish bag. Then he dropped the gloves and got a good lump of the green cream and started spreading it. With that on his hand, he carefully felt the glands in the boy’s throat.

“At least you don’t seem to be having a systemic allergic reaction, that would be nasty this far out. I have some anti-histamine tablets, but I must admit they’re a bit old.”

“What’s in the stuff?” the boy asked suspiciously of the green cream.

“Olive oil, plantain, beeswax and mostly yarrow. Good against cuts and things, too.”

“But what’s this sumac?”

“It’s a tree, compound leaf – midrib in the middle, leaves about yea size coming off that.” Peter showed him with hand gestures. “It’s worse than the other two, though the same active ingredient but it’s usually not something you brush through.”

“That’s it. Across the path. Someone had cut one down. It was all dried; I pushed my way through it. But – ivy stays active after it’s dry, doesn’t it?”

“Some idiot!”

“What?”

“No, not you. The person who left it there. I can understand wanting to cut it down, can’t burn the stuff, the smoke and oil can kill animals and people downwind, but leave it away from where anyone can touch it, or put a sign, something! You could have had a serious reaction, and have died of it. We should go back and do something. Can you show me where it was?”

The boy looked dubious. “I’m not sure I remember the way I came, so many paths twisting and turning. Been a coupla days.”

“Mm.”

“Oh, I think that is helping, Mister. Thank you!”

“Probably just the cold at first! My name’s Peter. What’s yours?”

The boy hesitated, Peter knew he was going to lie and, thinking of the biography he was reading, said, “How ‘bout Neal? Like the astronaut? Looks like you’re travelling through alien space here!”

“Yeah – Neal. How’d you know, mis – Peter?”

“I’m very good at guessing. It’s my greatest talent, guessing. I’d also guess that you don’t want to visit a hospital, even with that amount of rash?”

The tightening of the muscles and the involuntary step towards the door answered him before the boy said, “Don’t like hospitals?” in a small voice.

“Well, then, I’m going to go and get those fish, if some bear hasn’t got them – if so, sorry, beans for supper!”

The fish were lying peaceably where he’d left them. By the time he came back in, half expecting the boy to be gone, he was sitting carefully on a towel on the edge of the couch.

He got Neal two aspirins and a handful of vitamins – his mother made him take them with him, and they couldn’t hurt – and made him drink as much orange juice as he could hold. He fried the fish in butter over the little gas cooker and they had it with boiled potatoes and some greens he’d picked the day before.

“That’s so good!” Neal said, wiping the plate with a piece of bread. “Thank you.”

Peter knew youngsters ate a lot, his mom had teased him at that age, but from the way Neal had eaten he had been living on very little. Peter felt his heart soften. “How’re you feeling? Better?”

“Just tired, mostly!”

“Probably very stressful for the body, that much of it being poisoned! Can you sleep on the couch? I always did, until I was bigger than you are.”

“I’ll be fine.” Neal pulled a blanket off the back and lay down.

“Oh, Neal,” Peter said, calmly, “if you feel the need to rush off early tomorrow morning, there’s about thirty bucks in the emergency fund in the coffee tin up there. Help yourself if you need it, okay?”

Peter knew quite well that the boy had already helped himself. When one knows a little cabin that well and a coffee can changes the way it is facing even by a few degrees, one notices!

“Okay. Thanks. ‘Night!”

Peter assumed the boy would be long gone in the morning, but he was curled up on his side and sleeping deeply.

Over scrambled eggs, Neal said, “You goin’ make trouble for me, Peter?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Oh. I – er – I ran away.”

“Ran away from something or ran away to something?”

“Bit of both.”

They spent the rest of Peter’s holiday at the cabin. Neal’s skin healed with the use of the cream, though the healing, he said, was as itchy as the rash! They made two more batches and Neal seemed to find it fascinating that something effective could be made from plants and simple things.

  
“Jewel-weed, you know, the one that has the popping seed-pods? – that’s also good right away,” Peter told him.

  
“That one I know, but I didn’t even think I’d got caught. I’ve had a mild reaction to poison ivy in the past, and I thought I was safe with the ‘leaves of three, let it be’ thing – now poison sumac catches me, no three-leaves at all!”

  
“Mother Nature can sometimes be downright mean!” Peter imitated his accent and Neal grinned.

They fished and cooked outside over an open fire and joked and asked each other no personal questions. Peter enjoyed sharing some bush-lore with the boy, and Neal seemed to take pleasure in the whole experience.

Wearing a straw hat that Peter’s mother had left here, Peter’s trousers bunched at his waist with some string and rolled up to mid-calf, thin and gangly, hair ruffled and untidy, a fishing pole over his shoulder, he could have modelled for a book-jacket of Huck Finn!

The evening before Peter was leaving, he asked Neal if he’d like to come and live with him.

“I don’t have all that much and I don’t make all that much, but I’ve got a nice little apartment and the authorities will like that I’m in law enforcement, I think. You aren’t supposed to be by yourself and I’m sure you don’t want to go back to where you came from. I don’t know if I can make it work, from the legal side, but would you like to try?”

Neal looked at him dubiously.

“You’ve lived with me here for over two weeks. We get on okay?” Peter half-asked. “Look – you don’t like it, you can always run away again!”

Neal laughed. “That’s true. And if you try, and the authorities won’t let me stay with you, I’m going to run away right then.”

“Deal. At least let me try.”

 

‘The authorities’, as it turned out, were only too pleased that someone with Peter’s credentials was prepared to try with this young waif who was a repeat and inveterate runaway, a facile liar and almost certainly an accomplished thief. They told him stories that made him grin in disbelief. Those so-called foster-parents and reform-school administrators were just trying to cover their asses.

“You have to go to school, okay?”

Neal looked uncertain. Peter nodded. “Really, or they’ll come and take you away!”

“They’ll try,” Neal said, calmly. “I’ll give them this, they keep trying! But as my grandma said, the one thing you can say ‘bout the devil is he’s persistent!”

 _Grandma, huh?_ The first personal fact Neal had let slip! Neal grinned at him. “Everyone has a grandma, Peter. Two, actually. Mine died a good long time ago.” Peter decided to ignore him.

“Please, Neal, you are obviously bright – please go to school?”

“Reaching, Peter! Reaching!”

“You don’t want to learn?”

“Not most of the rubbish they teach…and it’s so boring!”

“You could make friends…”

“Unlikely. Won’t say impossible. Never happened before.”

Peter was silenced. He had Neal’s files, now, he even knew his real name, or the one recorded in the files. They’d stuck with Neal – leave the past behind. If one read the files verbatim, Neal was surly, angry, withdrawn, touchy, lazy, depressed, solitary and in all ways a difficult child. No-one said he was stupid.

“Here’s something to think about, then,” Peter tried. “What if you don’t go to school and suddenly at thirty or some great age like that, you decide you want to be something – an astronaut, like your name-sake. Then you’d have to go back to school and fit yourself in those leetle chairs and learn with all the five-year-olds, or give up your dream and be a janitor, which, for the purposes of my story, you hate! And the way things are going, you’re going to need a degree if you do like being a janitor.”

Neal chuckled, and lit the whole room. Peter smiled back. “Okay, Peter, I’ll give it a try but I’m not going if I have to sit in those ‘leetle chairs with the five-year-olds’!”

***

Peter was called into Neal’s school nearly every second day of his first two weeks. Neal had told each class he’d attended a different long and extremely funny story of his life previous to this and was subverting the other pupils - Neal was fighting – Neal had left school in the middle of the day – Neal had climbed up the drainpipe and tied his teacher’s sweater to the top like a flag – Neal had somehow accessed the locked Headmaster’s office, caused the school’s PA system to play a tape of the 1812 Overture over and over – loud! – and jammed the lock so no-one could get in to shut the damn thing off - Neal had tackled a boy while playing basketball – basketball! – and he’d needed stitches. The other boy, not Neal.

Neal sat impassive and unrepentant next to Peter and listened to the allegations levelled against him, and Peter prayed he’d be given inspiration or he’d be sitting next to Neal in a court-room some day… _no, stop that!_

Peter was calm and made excuses and got Neal out of there. At home, he asked for an explanation.

“It’s boring, and the other kids are horrid and I don’t like them and it’s boring.”

“Yes, you said that. Boring. What was this latest thing about the basketball?”

“I sort of fell, Bruce was in the way. Then he fell.”

“Ah. Bruce was the boy you were fighting five days ago.”

“Well, he was fighting. My cheek foolishly got in the way.”

Peter sighed. “I know you’re from the south, and you know that in the south you’d be paddled for any of these behaviours. And my dad, if you’d been his, would have paddled you a lot harder! Or taken his strop to your backside. You wouldn’t be sitting in any chairs, little or otherwise, without some wincing and chagrin.”

Neal glanced up without any sign of trepidation whatsoever. “Even think about trying it, and I’m out of here.”

“I’m not going to try it – not yet!”

Neal seemed surprised. After a long pause… “Why?”

“Because you’re too old for it, that’s why. At least I think you are. You’re intelligent and mature for your age. You’re not a child, Neal, yet you are behaving like a child…no responsibility, no common sense.  
...........“I believe you’re a good kid, muddled, confused by some poor treatment in your past, but you’re not badly treated now, so stop acting out. Because if the school and you, between you, convince me that you are a silly child, I _will_ paddle you! I’ll whallop you so you really regret it! And if you run away – well, I can’t stop you. I’m not going to lock you up! I’m trying to give you something, but you have to accept it. If you don’t want what I’m offering, I can’t force it on you.”

Neal sat and thought and Peter went and made supper. Neal came through and helped and was quieter than usual all evening. Two weeks went past without any calls to Peter and on the way home one day when Peter managed to be there to pick him up, Peter asked, “Everything okay at school?”

“Yeah, kids are boring, most of the lessons are boring. But I’m trying to learn what I can, and there are some things that I enjoy. There’s a library.”

“You haven’t mentioned any friends…?”

“I don’t make friends easily. I do things with some of them, they’re made to be my partner on some project, but they think I’m odd. I am, of course. I don’t fit in, I don’t want to fit in.”

Peter was a little sad at that, and Neal saw it. “I’d like to – I think I’d like to do some art, painting, drawing…are there any cheap classes, do you think?” Peter was quite aware that he was offering him this as consolation for his lack of a social life.

However, Peter did some checking and found there was a well-thought-of art teacher that did lessons at the Y, and signed Neal up. After that, Neal’s vocabulary became laced with terms like hue and perspective, glaze and translucence, and he lit up when he was talking about what he learned.

Neal collected things. At first he hid them under his bed, in his book-bag, behind the clock in his room: coins, string, a box of matches, a cd, a can opener. Peter wasn’t sure how to handle this, so he added to them. More coins, extra string, a match book, a tin of tuna, tape cassette.  
After a little while, Neal’s little pile of disconnected finds were on his dresser. Peter anonymously donated a shoe box to put them in. Neither of them ever mentioned it. After a while, he stopped doing it.

 

After a little more than three months, Neal came home with a watercolour and gave it to Peter with a fine show of indifference.

“Neal!” Peter was startled. He knew very little about art, but he knew when something jumped out at him as alive!

“It’s where we met – the lake – when I was out-of-my-mind-crazy with that rash.”

“I know where it is, Neal! What a memory you must have to paint it just as it is! I’ve seen it hundreds of times and I couldn’t imagine it as you have painted it! This is beautiful! It’s for me?”

“Yeah. It’s six months since we met.” Peter thought he’d burst with pride.

Neal seemed content to do more things at the Y – he took swimming lessons, tennis lessons, and he seemed much more settled, seeing school as a necessary evil while he learned other things.  
He was so quiet and polite and so little trouble that Peter was concerned!

“How’d you get into the cabin, by the lake, that time?” Peter asked.

“Picked the lock.”

 _Uh-oh!_ “Who taught you to pick locks?” _That’s what he did at the school!_

“Books. I read a lot. There was a good library, the whole system is good.”

“What, ‘Crime for Dummies’?” Peter asked, disbelieving.

“You have to know where to look, Peter,” Neal grinned. “I called for all the books for magicians. They have all the basics in there…escape artists, juggling, all sorts of good stuff. I’ll show you some card tricks some time.” Neal paused. “But something I’ve always wanted to know – could you teach me poker? I’ve never had anyone to play with.”

Peter threw back his head and laughed. “Horrible little hustler!”

Neal chuckled, admitting to the charge, and went off to finish some of his homework.

_Perhaps those people who complained about him were right!_

 

Neal hit a growth spurt and Peter was relieved that the boy seemed totally unlike other teens of his acquaintance. He loved digging in thrift stores for clothing, rather than wanting the latest (most expensive and least practical, to Peter’s mind) fashion. Peter watched him showing off a suit he’d found and had altered at the Laundromat, and realised that he often thought of Neal as older than he was. He saw a man looking out through the teenager’s eyes.  
...........He’d heard of women talking about their daughter’s wedding day, as though they could see it as they watched their little toddler smear mud over her chubby cheeks. Perhaps this was the same…and Neal’s school-mates weren’t going to find him any more like them wearing a suit, however well-fitting!

And then suddenly there was a change. Neal was always polite and quiet on the whole, impatient of rules sometimes, disliking having to do things most teenagers did. But always grateful for all that Peter was doing for him. The nearest they’d come to arguments were about clothes and having to attend school. And now the worst the teachers could say about Neal was that he didn’t make friends, and seemed distracted and distant, but his grades were very good, so it was probably the boredom of the intellectually gifted. (Which made Peter, having nothing at all to do with it, very proud!)

Now, though, Neal was missing for more hours than usual. He missed making dinner once, when he’d said he would do it, and often came in late for meals and went out ‘to the library’ at odd hours, too. Peter jumped to the obvious conclusion: a girl. And a girl Neal hadn’t brought home.

Peter was struck by a horrible thought that perhaps he should talk to Neal about safe sex… _oh, please, no!_ But the many, many foster parents in his file almost certainly hadn’t. He hadn’t stayed at any one of them for long enough! But surely kids learned stuff from each other…oh, yeah, he’d sure learnt a lot of useful garbage!

Peter used his skills…but there were no apparently foreign hairs on Neal’s clothing, no lingering perfume, no make-up smudges.

He tried, one breakfast. He cleared his throat. “Neal…ever been on a date?”

Neal looked up, eyes slightly glazed, thinking about some art project, probably. He came into focus and jerked back. “Oh, Peter, no – ew! We are **_not_**   having this conversation! I read books, remember? You have not got to think about this again. Well – only if I ask you for a stroller for Christmas, granddad!” He grinned cheekily, got up, dropped a kiss on Peter’s head and left, chuckling.

Peter sighed. Partly in relief.

Then Peter was walking through the park and saw Neal standing watching a couple play chess from a little way away. One was an ancient black man with a wrinkled face and thin, slightly gnarled, elegant fingers, the other, behind whom Neal was standing, was some years older than Neal, shorter, wearing glasses.  
..........From where Peter was standing, he couldn’t see the other boy’s face, or Neal’s. He was aware though, of the intensity of Neal’s regard. He could practically see it. But just then the boy moved a piece and the black man threw up his hands and laughed, and his opponent stood and turned, his eyes sliding off Neal, and walked away, pocketing some money. Neal stood there for a few moments, thoughtfully, and then followed slowly, not trying to catch up.

Peter worried about it. It was totally illogical, but he felt in his just-becoming-famous gut that this was Trouble! It was like hearing thunder in the distance. Ominous.

At dinner he asked casually what Neal had done that day. “Nothing much. School. Went to the Y, did some stuff, swam a bit, walked home through the park.”

Now Peter realised he had to be careful not to appear to have been watching Neal. He said, “Then it _was_ you I saw! I was walking back from meeting a snitch,” that part was true, “and I thought it was you on the other side of one of those diagonals. You were with another boy.”

“Wasn’t me you saw, then.”

“Yeah – he was playing chess?” Neal looked hard at him. Peter flinched inwardly. The joys of bringing up an intellectually gifted teenager. He went on, “I was pleased – I’d like you to have a friend or two. It’s a great time of your life for making friends.”

Neal raised his eyebrows. “If you tell me that schooldays are the happiest days of my life, I shall without compunction commit suicide now, since if I believed you - and I have no reason not to - there’s pitifully little to hope for.”

Peter grinned. “No, I won’t say that. I enjoyed mine, but I think you’ll enjoy University more. There’s not much challenge for you at this level, is there?”

“Somnolence. My greatest challenge.”

They laughed together, and only afterwards, when Neal had retired to his room, did Peter realise he was no further in knowing who the boy with glasses was.

It was a few days later, when Peter knew Neal had time to himself… He didn’t want to spy, but he’d heard the horror stories…not paying enough attention, especially to a kid that was a natural loner, some sort of abusive background, intelligent…that’s how parents suddenly found their child on drugs, or with bomb-making equipment in the basement. And he had this bad feeling about Neal meeting this older boy. **_This_** older boy. He’d even tried finding out if the boy had a criminal record, but had found nothing from photos – he hadn’t really got a good look at his face.

So he carefully walked down another path, eyes peeled, but neither Neal nor the other boy were anywhere in the park that he could see. But as he was about to leave, he saw them come out of a coffee shop across the street together, smiling at each other. The older boy turned and shook Neal’s hand, and walked away, a paper under his arm. He had wondered if the older boy was propositioning Neal, who was good looking enough, but that surely didn’t usually involve formal hand-shakes!

Peter stepped back into the shadow of a large tree. He took out his phone and made a call, looking back the way he had come.

“Peter?” He spun round to find Neal right there. “I thought it was you. Meeting your snitch again?”

“More like wondering if I can find him again,” Peter said, which was again true, the snitch had gone to ground. “What’re you doing? Should we have something? – Is there somewhere around here? I don’t have to go back into the office.”

“No, I’m good.” Neal hesitated. “Shall we go home?”

  
Peter was at a loss. He didn’t want to alienate Neal, hated that he even wanted to spy on him.

But three days later, fate stepped in, and Peter and a probie, Robbie, coming from a meeting with a bank manager wanting security advice, turned a corner and ran flat into Neal and the boy with the glasses…who immediately looked down, muttered, “’Scuse me,” and walked on as though he hadn’t been with Neal at all. Neal stopped.

“Hi, Neal!” Robbie said, smiling. “How’re you doing?”

“Good, thank you,” Neal smiled politely.

“So you have made friends with the boy from the park,” Peter said, casually. “I guess he was in a hurry. Pity.”

Neal seemed about to deny any connection to boy-with-glasses, but shrugged instead. “Not friends…he’s a lot older. Very intelligent. Got lots of interesting ideas, though.”

“Got to get back. See you tonight?”

“I’ll get dinner ready.”

“I’ll try and be on time.”

“Yeah, the last time I tried a soufflé will be the last time until you retire, Agent Burke! It was pretty good…made for an hour after you were supposed to arrive. After that – well, not so much.” Neal smiled.

“It tasted fine,” Peter told him, and Neal made a face, Peter patted his shoulder and they walked away from him.

“Everything okay, Boss?” Robbie asked.

“I hope so, Rob.”

 

Peter thought how his mom had dealt with undesirable friends. Put them against a backdrop of Normal, their odd characteristics became very plain. “So, Neal, would you like to ask your friend to come to dinner? We could make something nice, put another chair in your room so you’ll have some privacy. Could be fun.”

Neal glanced up. “The guy from the park? Not a friend, Peter – hey, he’s much older. We talked a bit, that’s all.”

“Why don’t you have him over, though? You can talk here – the days are getting colder, and we can fix up your room a little so it’s comfortable enough for two…you know - ”

“And you could get a better look at him.” Neal hit the nail on the head with the first swing, as he often did.

“Well, I’d like to meet him.”

“Yeah, don’t go re-arranging furniture, Peter. It’s one thing for him to exchange a few words in the park, quite another to come to dinner with a kid and his guardian.”

Peter finished putting things away and went through. Neal was sitting with his bare feet up on the couch, a large library book about Picasso open against his thighs. “Peter, I know why Picasso painted all those weird paintings, what he was trying to do!” he called, thinking that Peter was still in the kitchen.

He certainly didn’t look like the next criminal mastermind!

_But then, that’s what makes him so good! –_

_Where do these thoughts come from?_

Peter decided to be direct. “Hey, the older guy, what’s his name?”

“His name? Pablo. Isn’t that what babies eat?” Neal looked over, frowning a little.

“Pablo’s Spanish for Paul. The baby food’s probably a different etymology,” Peter smiled, and Neal looked a little apprehensive. “Peter…?”

“Yes, Neal?”

“I’d really like a good dictionary. Old, big, giving all the meanings and the roots of words,” he looked away, imagining. “I’m sure people give stuff like that away, don’t they? If I can find one for a few bucks, ten bucks, could I buy it?”

Before Peter could say anything, he went on, “You could give it to me for my birthday!”

Peter grinned. “When do we celebrate your birthday?”

Neal laughed, closed the book, got up and walked past Peter, patting his arm as he did. “When I find my dictionary!”

Peter hadn’t found out the older boy’s name. How could he have adopted a lad who apparently ignored girls – and boys – and mooned over dictionaries? Neal played baseball quite well, could skate – he had basic good balance – and had taken part in some volunteer charity inter-school football game, which Peter had attended – to Neal’s discomfiture when he found out afterwards, but Peter had been impressed!  
None of the sports ‘took’, even though he was athletic and co-ordinated. He preferred tennis and swimming…but then, he wasn’t a team player, was he? Not surprising.

Peter never saw Neal at the park after that unless he took him there, and he never mentioned the boy with the glasses.

 

Peter was being given financial assistance because he was taking care of Neal, and his little apartment really was too small, so they spent some time together looking, and finally Peter put a small down-payment on a duplex.

“Ah! Peter Burke, property owner!” Neal smiled as they unpacked.

“Yeah. It feels good, you know?”

“Maintenance, property taxes, cleaning the sidewalks in winter…owner or owned by?”

“You are far too young to be so cynical!”

“Obviously not, Peter!”

They settled in, did the usual fix-ups, painted a few walls here and there, upgraded the kitchen sink and faucet, did some gardening when the weather permitted. Peter watched Neal plant herbs in the pots they’d bought together to go on the little porch, and wondered if he’d ever have a son, and if he did, would he feel this way about him…this deep love, affection and pride intermingled with ongoing fears and images of disaster?

 

Then there came the weird incident of the dinner guest. Neal could cook rather well, and tried different dishes, telling Peter it was just like chemistry only the smells were better! Peter asked Neal if he could cook for three one Saturday, as his mentor in the Bureau, who had been working in DC, would be in town. Neal agreed readily.

Phil Kramer came to the door and Peter greeted him with a big smile. Phil had been a great help to him, and he really liked the man, was proud that Phil had singled him out. Neal came through, wiping his hands on a dishtowel, and Peter introduced them and Phil convivially shook Neal’s hand.

Peter was so focussed on making sure that Phil was well looked-after that he didn’t, at first, realise that Neal was doing a convincing imitation of a bird watching an approaching snake.  
He hardly spoke, he stuttered when he did, his movements were stilted and mechanical, he dropped his napkin three times, knocked over his water-glass and as soon as they’d eaten he excused himself, saying he had to go and finish a school paper.

“Oh, what a pity, I wanted to find out more about you, Neal!” Phil said.

Neal gave Peter a desperate stare and said, “I’ve got to get it in, sorry! I’ll load the dishwasher first!” Peter was astonished. The last sounded like a frantic bargain… _please, I’ll do this if you let me go!_

“Neal did warn me he had a lot of work to do, Phil,” Peter agreed, and Neal’s warm glance was a reward if not an explanation.

After about an hour-and-a-half, when Peter asked about more coffee, Phil suggested that he see if Neal could join them, but when Peter went up Neal seemed deeply asleep.

The next day Peter asked what had been wrong. Neal hesitated and murdered a slice of bread with his fingers, mangling it into its individual crumbs.  
.............“Peter, I’ll be good, I’ll work hard at school, I won’t be any trouble, but please, if you want to see your – your colleague, could you take him somewhere else? Or get him to take you, he probably makes more. Or – or I’ll get everything ready and go to the library or the Y, or somewhere else…please.”

“But why? He’s a really good guy, Neal.”

Neal looked as ready to make a run for it as the first time Peter saw him. “I – I don’t know, I don’t like him, I – I’m allergic! Or phobic? - He makes my skin crawl!” He swallowed. “Please, Peter, I don’t inflict any awful friends on you!”

“You haven’t inflicted anyone on me, awful or otherwise, and I’d like to meet some of your friends!”

“Don’t have friends. And let’s be honest, most of those kids at school wouldn’t really like to meet a Fed, Peter.”

“Why!” Peter felt hurt.

“They drink and smoke pot and stuff. They think I’m awfully odd…can’t see them enjoying being with either of us.”

“Have **_you?”_**

“What, beer and rubbishy wine out of a box and sharing a toke with people I don’t like? Seriously?”

Peter swallowed a few words…after all, _he_ liked beer! “Okay, okay, but Phil isn’t like that!”

“Much worse. They’re shallow and silly but he’s – he’s – I wouldn’t trust him, Peter.”

“Well, I do!”

“Please, be careful! Please! He’s not good. I’ve known some people that are not good, Peter, and none of them were as bad as he is. He’s **_awful! Dangerous.”_**

“What nonsense, Neal!”

“You’ll see. I’m not stupid about this sort of thing. I had to survive. One develops an instinct. Just tell him I’ve gone to visit my …grandma, who’s visiting from – from Phoenix.”

“Why Phoenix?”

“I don’t know anyone there, out west at all, so if he tries to use it to find more about me - ”

“Neal! Stop it! I won’t lie to my friend!”

“Fine, let’s try the truth if you’re so taken with that approach. You tell him I am staying away from your place as long as he is in town because I loathed him at first sight and would much – **_MUCH_** – rather have a truck-load of disease-carrying leeches to dinner than him. And I hate that he even knows what you call me, and that isn’t my legal name!”

“But - ”

“Exactly. It’s surprising how few people actually do want to tell the whole truth, or to hear it for that matter. Easier to say what they want to hear, what will get the right result, they prefer it and it doesn’t cause fights.”

Peter shook his head, exasperated. No matter what he said, Neal wouldn’t budge. He didn’t like Phil Kramer, for no reason he could give, and that was that. Peter managed to keep Phil away from the house without offending him, or telling him outrageous lies, and soon he left for DC.  
Neal relaxed a little on hearing that he was no longer in town, and visibly when Peter received a call from Phil from DC, since Neal seemed to have a crazy idea that Phil might try to fool Peter – and him - and stay in town secretly! He even went to the phone after Peter had put it down and dialled *69 to check that the call _had_ come from DC!

 

One day a few months later, Peter got a phone call from Neal. He was at a bookstore. He’d said he’d called all the second hand book-stores within rather a large area, and was asking if Peter could pick him up along with the heavy and bulky books.

Peter could only get away and meet him more than an hour later and Neal hurried out with an apple-box and put it on the back seat. A man from the store carried another box out, Neal thanked him and stowed it alongside the first, shook the man’s hand, waved at someone in the store and got in beside Peter.

As they pulled away, he turned, his eyes alight. “I got it! A huge old dictionary! Two! And a set of encyclopaedias from early last century! Oh, lovely books!”

“How much did this set me back?” Peter asked, grinning at his enthusiasm.

Neal’s turned back from gloating over the boxes and his face closed down. “Um…twenty-five dollars. I’m sorry, I know it was more than I said, but it’s not just the one dictionary! And - ”

“It’s fine, Neal! It’s a cheap birthday, so far! What else do you want to do to celebrate?”

“We could build a book-case for these, couldn’t we? You’re good at that sort of stuff?”

Peter turned and looked at him, more surprised still.

“Watch the road, Peter!” Then, “Oh, you’d rather go to a ball-game or something? That’d be fine! The books can sit on the floor in my room!”

“Let’s get a pizza and work out some plans. These are big books!”

In the end, Peter enjoyed himself very much. They sat and discussed the bookshelves and Neal drew the plans and they ate pizza and laughed together. As they parted to go to bed, Neal stopped Peter and said, “Thank you so much for everything, Peter. This is so special! These are really mine!”

“Happy birthday, Neal! I love you, you know?”

Neal was suddenly arrested in turning away. He spun back. “You what-was-that, now?”

“I love you. I thought you knew.”

“No, no, actually – well, that’s nice. I – I thought you were just being kind, or saving the ‘at risk youth’. I mean, thank you. I probably love you, too, Peter. I just haven’t had much p-practice.”  
Peter took a step closer and hugged him, and Neal hugged him back, desperately, as though Peter might disappear at any second. How many people had abandoned this poor child?

They built the bookcases together. Neal was careful and detail-oriented, never once taking a wrong measurement.  
.........“What do you want to do later on, as a job?” Peter asked, seeing his work. Again, totally unlike most kids of Peter’s acquaintance who were impatient and perhaps careless, Neal seemed almost driven to make no mistakes.

Neal shrugged and Peter joshed, “I’m sure, by then, I’ll have enough prestige to get you into Quantico. How’d that be – both of us at the Bureau?”

Neal, carefully sharpening a pencil to mark the next shelf, said, “I’m glad you’re joking because otherwise I’d be compelled to say, ‘You must be joking!’”

“Why?” Peter demanded, slightly affronted.

“You have less dates than I do – so stop hinting about it to me, you’re a terrible example! – and if you did find a girl she’d have to be either stupidly besotted or live in another country, as you can never count on having any time to yourself, you can’t talk about your work, so it always sounds as though you don’t trust me – or her – you work long hours and are badly paid and, from what you don’t tell me because you seem not to trust me, you put your life in danger regularly.  
............“Not a good advert for being a Federal Agent.”

Peter swallowed his retort because, unfortunately, Neal was correct. “I enjoy it,” was all he could think of to say. Then he added, “And I’m helping my country.”

“Good. But with that lack of a close social life, wouldn’t it be more exciting to go the whole way and be a spy…you know, James Bond type thing? Can’t ever have a wife or children, but get to go to Monte Carlo and Paris and blow up things and play with fun gadgets?”

“I think the movies have perhaps painted the spygame as a little more – um – glamorous than it is in real life,” Peter said, dryly.

Neal turned and looked at him. “Isn’t that always the way? Anyway, Bond’s MI6, you’d have to be CIA. Drugs deals with South America and killing off President Kennedy. Horrid. I wouldn’t like killing strangers. Wouldn’t like killing off people I know, come to think of it, unless there’s absolutely no alternative. Don’t like them, leave them behind.  
..............“But,” his face lightened, “flying off with a secret mission, different passports with different names, pretending to be someone different each week, wearing gorgeous clothes, driving fancy cars, saving some girl from an evil despot of some little country…I can see myself as James Bond!”

“Ah!” Peter exclaimed. “The damsel in distress angle. Now I see why you like the idea.”

“Yes!” Neal nodded. “But being a spy – well, being MI6! – you just take her to her mother in Wales and leave her, earning their undying gratitude, but they’ll never see you again. In fact, as you leave, you burn the passport and character you were playing, forget all about her and change to a new character for your new mission!”

“I really think you might have a skewed vision of the life,” Peter said, helplessly. He felt very uncomfortable with this. He knew he was being stupid. Neal would never become a spy, changing his persona with every job!

But he **_could!_**

“I wonder why people get into world of spying. I can’t imagine governments actually pay their spies very much, just like you, Peter, but they might get to play with the cars and the helicopters and the millions to keep their cover as an international jet-setter, or whatever.  
...........“But since spies can’t ever talk about their work, how do they recruit other spies?”

“I have no idea. Now are we going to cut this board, or talk nonsense?” Peter demanded.

 

Christmas was coming. Peter had no idea what to get Neal. Gift cards for art supplies seemed a little impersonal. If he bought clothes Neal might feel forced to wear them however little he liked them. Then he thought of the books.

He went up to Neal’s room while Neal was showering and checked the books…none of them had the stamp or label of the second-hand bookshop, though some had vague, pale pencil markings on the inside front cover.

He couldn’t remember seeing the name of the bookshop – it was hard to see from inside the car – but he remembered where it was. The next time he could get away early, he made his way there. It was quite a long way outside his normal hang-outs. He parked as close as possible and walked.

“The Page-Turner,” he muttered to himself as he walked in and then to the girl behind the counter, “Hallo! You must be Paige Turner.”

“I beg your pardon, Sir?” she said.

“No, no, just making a poor joke. I came because you were kind enough to keep an eye open for various old books for my friend. Dictionaries, encyclopaedias, old ones, a law dictionary. He seems to like old stuff and art books. Do you happen to have anything like that?”

The girl looked blank – _A blank Paige_ Peter thought immediately - and said, “We don’t have much like that, Sir.”

“It was here. A man, older than you are, brown hair and hazel eyes, carried out one of the boxes to the car for us.”

“That’d be my Dad, Sir, he’s not here right now.”

Peter looked around. The shelves held mostly novels and travel books. “Art books?” he tried. Perhaps they had changed their target market or something, but he didn’t feel he’d get much help from Paige! She showed him what they had and he did find a bound version of many of Vincent’s letters to his brother, Theo, and a book on watercolour techniques.

He was paying Paige for these when a man walked in carrying a box of books, and Peter recognised him immediately. He explained his mission again, and the man shook his head. “I remember the incident. This young man comes in, looks around, then another dude brings in two boxes of books and your – friend? – looks and buys them off him before I can even get a look in. He did give me fifteen dollars and asked to use the phone to call – well, you, I must suppose. Then I helped him carry out the other box. I was in a hurry to close up, to be honest.”

“What did he look like, the man with the books?”

“Um…he was white…I think he had a hat…” The man wasn’t sure about that.

_And juries love eye-witnesses!_

“Oh!” Peter wasn’t sure what to say. He took his two finds home and wrapped them and put them under the tree. This didn’t make sense! How could Neal have paid twenty-five dollars for the two boxes, and given the bookstore owner fifteen…those books weren’t collectors’ items, but they were worth more than ten dollars! And hadn’t Neal said that he’d got the books from that store…? - but Peter couldn’t be sure he was remembering that exactly.

Had Neal made an assignation with someone to get those books? After all, what teenager these days loves books…a good-looking kid who was good at sports? It didn’t make sense. All at once a picture of the boy with glasses flashed into Peter’s mind. Could he have got the books for Neal for some reason?

Hating what he was doing, he went up to Neal’s room and started going through the books Neal had bought that day. He went through one after another, systematically and carefully. They looked like books to him! No hidden compartments, no white powder between the pages. No secrets hidden in the spines. Even the smell was right: old book glue.

“What on earth are you doing, Peter!”

Peter jumped as though **_he_** was the teenager and his dad had caught him hiding smokes on top of the bookcase. Which he had done – hidden them. His dad hadn’t found them, thank God!  
He turned and Neal’s expression was dark.

“Are you spying on me?”

“I just thought…I hoped…” Peter had no way of telling him without at the very least letting on about his Christmas present!  
...........“I wanted to find the date on these encyclopaedias, so that if I found another older set I could buy it for your Christmas present.”

“I believe the date on D – F is usually the same as A – C, Peter, am I wrong?”

There was a nasty silence.

“Okay, I went to the bookstore. Where you got these. I – I was hoping to find a nice present, it’s true. But they told me you – you bought these from a man there, they didn’t know who. Who was he, Neal?”

“I didn’t think it was important to get his name. I paid him, he gave me the books. Contract fulfilled. No need for the exchange of personal information.”

“What did he look like?”

“He was wearing a hat. And funny coloured shoes, I think. Sort of orangey.”

“You must have noticed more than that!”

Now Neal was frowning. “I was looking at the books. You should ask the bookstore if they have closed circuit television!”

“Maybe I will…but as I think about it, how is it that I am convinced they are the only bookstore in the whole five Burroughs without one?”

“Gosh, perhaps you’re right! Your investigative powers amaze me! They are probably stolen property! -”

“No dust-covers, not first editions, not signed. They aren’t that valuable!”

“They are to me! But you should take all the books…and I think the boxes are still in the basement! You could check for _clues and fingerprints!”_ Neal’s voice was breathy with feigned anticipation.

“Don’t be a smart-ass!”

“Then don’t be a dick-head!”

“Neal!”

“Peter!”

Peter sighed. This was just going nowhere, fast and badly. “Neal, I just wanted to see if the owner had put his name in these books, so I could contact him and see if he has any more. And I got confused - ”

“Yeah, easily done, Mr. FBI-agent-man!”

“Hey, young man, watch it! Seriously, the ice beneath your feet is thin and cracking!”

Neal said nothing, but his look was mutinous.

Peter tried again, “I just wondered how you’d paid this stranger some reasonable amount for the books and paid the storeowner fifteen and told me the whole came to twenty-five dollars.”

Neal looked away. “Okay, you caught me.”

_Aha!_

“Look, I paid the storeowner fifteen, ‘cause I was doing him out of his mark-up, and I paid the guy twenty, cause that’s what he wanted. I think he was probably getting rid of what he considered dad’s or granddad’s old rubbish. But I told you twenty-five because I estimated ten dollars for my dictionary-gift. I put in the rest. Sorry I lied, but I didn’t want you to feel bad about it.”

“But - ”

“I don’t know why you find it weird that I should want books. Books contain information! You want me to learn! I am learning! But because I’m learning, you’re all suspicious. Should I have bought them myself and hidden them somewhere and got you to buy me a baseball glove or a hockey stick or something? Would that have made you feel good about me?”

“But where did you get the money?”

  
“I robbed a bank, Peter! I stole the Hope diamond and King Tutankhamen’s mask! I grabbed the handbags of the entire membership of the Darby and Joan club – oh, sorry, the handbags **_and_ ** wallets! I - ”

  
“You’re more likely to use your skills and forge a Rembrandt!” Peter was horrified at himself as soon as the words left his mouth!

Neal, however, brightened up instantly and lost his hard, angry look. “You think I could?”

“No, no, no! Any more than I think you could hold up a bank or steal from little old ladies and gentlemen!”

“Oh.” Neal looked uncommonly disappointed. Then he seemed reconciled, if thoughtful. “I suppose I lack experience. I’d have to study his style, colours, brush-strokes. I’d have to match the materials and canvasses and things, too. Hmm.”

“Neal! It is no great feat to copy some other artist’s brilliance! You’re a talented artist in your own right!”

“If it’s no great feat, why do so few people accomplish it? And let’s be honest, a Rembrandt would sell for a great deal more than anything signed by me!”

“And you’d risk decades in prison for forgery.”

“You don’t put people inside for forging the works of great artists, Peter!”

“You are so very wrong, Neal! That’s exactly what I do!”

“Forfeit! You get to the clean the bathroom all this month! _And_ the oven!”

“Why?”

“You don’t put people inside for forging the works of great masters! You put people inside for **_getting caught_**   forging the works of great masters!” Neal went off into a delighted peal of laughter at Peter’s face.

“You’re a horrible child!”

“And you love me! You said so!”

“I did. I must have been mad!”

“And I didn’t have to do anything to make a lot of money, Peter. You give me a small allowance and I save it. I don’t buy many new clothes, or buy take out or take girls out, for that matter. I wanted to get the books.  
...........“It was my ** _birthday.”_**

Most times Neal seemed an adult in a child’s body. Older child, but still. But now and then, he just sounded like a small, lonely child, trying to be accepted.

“Don’t be silly, Neal. I’m glad you got those books, and I’ll make up what you paid for them – those and the materials for the bookshelf weren’t all that much! I may be only a lowly-paid government servant without a licence to kill, but I’m not that badly off!  
............“And just tell me what you’d like for Christmas, would you?”

 

Neal seemed to become even more introverted. He read, and his choice of books was not the run-of-the-mill teenage choices – if anything at all was run-of-the-mill about Neal! Peter found a pile of library books by his bed: V, Self-Reliance, Battle Studies, Chess for Beginners (a huge tome!)…and he read while playing classical music, mostly Mozart, some Bach, cd’s he’d taken out from the library.

From what Peter could see, Neal had not the slightest interest in alcohol, drugs, parties or video games. He went to the gym at the Y, and the only vaguely ‘normal’ thing he enjoyed were certain foods and movies, preferably free on TV…even there, he often preferred older movies, and Peter would come in to find him engrossed in a black-and-white production from the ‘thirties or ‘forties, or foreign films with sub-titles that Peter loathed.

“Don’t know why I invested in a colour set!” Peter had joked.

_I just don’t understand him at all. He’s so unlike I was at that age…!_

Peter took Neal’s laundry up two weeks later when Neal was at his art class, and as he was putting them on the bed, he managed to drop a pair of socks. Annoyed, he went down on his knees and fished for it, but couldn’t feel it…he bent right down and peered under the bed and there it was, against a pile of books. Tucked right out of the way. Why would Neal have an obvious pile next to his bed, and this one…?

He pulled on the bedside rug and brought the books to where he could read the titles: Respect for Acting; An Actor Prepares; Creating Believable Characters; Accents and Dialects; Intermediary Italian; Hand Gestures that Sell; Selling your Persona; Becoming Someone Else; Living in Italy.

Peter had a flash of Neal ten years from now, smiling that charming smile, sophisticated, well-dressed, running cons on influential and extremely dangerous people. He thought of all the times Neal had tried to find out about FBI procedures, how they processed evidence, what Peter thought of as the perfect crime.

Was the obvious pile of books just for show? After all, what did he really know about this boy he had living in his house? The authorities had given him the name of his mother and father, his birth name, where he was born. But from the little the files contained, much of that had been garnered from some sort of aunt. The child’s birth had never been registered, all sorts of information was circumstantial at best.

He pushed the concealed pile of books back where he’d found them, very troubled.

The strange flashes continued. The worst was when he came up behind Neal who was standing at the window. “Lovely sunset, fantastic colours!” Neal called, and turned. His white T-shirt , his hair, he was surrounded by the orange glow. Peter saw him older, sadder, angrier, dressed in orange, in prison orange.

 

 _He’s going to break my heart,_ Peter thought.

 

He didn’t know how to broach the subject without making the whole matter worse, making Neal distrust him. He just tried to be as supportive as possible. He did ask Neal if he ever thought of moving overseas someday, after they’d seen a bit of a travelogue about Greece.

“Yeah, maybe. I’d like to learn more about other cultures.”

“Perhaps we could plan a trip sometime? You’d like to see Italy, Paris, all the art there?”

“Yeah. That’d be great – but expensive, Peter!”

“You’d like to go with me? That wouldn’t be…uncool?”

“Oh, you’re pretty great for an uncool, bureaucrat type!”

“Seriously?”

“No, jokingly! - But I’d rather go later. I think I’ll get more out of it when I’m older.”

 

Peter found a list of names on a piece of paper in Neal’s pretty handwriting:

STEVE TABERNACLE;  
NICK HOLDER/HALDEN/HALERIN;  
GEORGE, DAVID,  
DEVORE, WINCHESTER; BLAKE; RYDELL;  
BENJAMIN COOPER?  
GEORGE DONNELLY?

He couldn’t think what these were for, and was too afraid to ask Neal.

 

Another few months went by and then one evening quite late the phone rang. Peter picked it up and said, “Hallo?” but there was nothing. It was an open line; somebody was there…just a freaky mouth-breather? He repeated “Hallo?” and when there was no response, he replaced the receiver.

About five minutes later, the phone rang again and this time Neal got up and went over. He picked up the phone, said, “Hi!” and listened. His expression changed. He asked short questions in a voice too soft for Peter to hear. Then he said, “Please! I’ll try! I’m sorry! I’m not going to – _wait!”_

Peter came over and looked at Neal looking at the receiver.  
“Something’s wrong?”

Neal was silent for a minute, and then he said, “Yes.”

“What?” Peter said, sharply.

Neal turned and looked at him, the clear blue eyes searching the brown, and asked, simply, “How much can I trust you, Peter?”

Peter’s heart seemed to miss several beats. This was it – the future he saw for Neal had been going on all along, parallel to the one he showed Peter. _How do I handle this?_

“Neal, if it’s something illegal, I can’t ignore it.”

“Yeah. Right - of course. No, nothing like that. Someone wanted me to go to a concert, it’ll be late and there’ll be drinking and drugs probably. I should have known better than to ask.”

Neal turned and left, saying, “Good night, Peter. See ya tomorrow.”

Peter went up and got ready for bed. As he lay there in the dark, he shuddered. All his worst nightmares…since when did his book-worm go – or even think of going – to a concert? This was someone trying to set something up – and something definitely illegal!

He’d said the right thing…why did it totally ** _NOT_**   feel like the right thing? As though all the bad images just got brighter, sharper: Neal in the dock, Neal hand-cuffed, Neal hurt, Neal incarcerated, Neal alone, Neal hating him … and mental images of Neal happy, teasing him, visiting Italy and at Varsity, they became vague, misty and just faded into nothingness?

On impulse he got out of bed and padded over to Neal’s room.

Which was empty.

Peter ran down the stairs and out of the front door and saw Neal turn the corner. He yelled – _damn the neighbours!_ – “Neal! Wait! I’ll help you!”

Neal started, looked at him and got set to run, but Peter yelled, even louder, **_“Please!”_** and Neal hesitated. Taking that as a good sign, Peter jogged up the sidewalk towards him in his bare feet.

“Come back – I’ll drive you. I’ll help you. Whatever you need.”  
Neal searched his eyes again and, to Peter’s deep relief, turned without a word and walked beside him back to the house.

“Now tell me what you need,” Peter said.

“You aren’t going to become Mr Agent again, are you?”

“Not for the moment!”

“I can trust you?”

“Yes, Neal, you can trust me.”

“It’s my friend. My friend from the park? The guy with glasses?”

“What’s his name?”

Neal hesitated. “I probably shouldn’t tell you.”

Peter swallowed. _This gets worse!_   He asked, “The kid’s in trouble?”

“Not a kid, really. He’s all on his own. And sometimes it’s a bit hairy. And he’s scared of some people. And he asked me for help and I told him I’d tell you and we’d help and he – he put the phone down.”

“Why?”

“You’re a Fed. A Suit. He doesn’t trust anyone…well, perhaps he did trust me, until tonight. He **_especially_**   doesn’t trust government officials.”

“But he’s in trouble?”

“Yeah, he saw …someone…a member of the mob, he says his name’s Vinnie…? …he saw him kill someone. But one of the men with this Vinnie saw M…my friend. Now my friend is all sorts of smart, and he got away.”

“But Neal, he has to come in and - ”

“Don’t be daft, Peter. He’d rather take his chances with the mob, because he feels that with the government there are no chances other than bad ones.”

“And you were going to try and help him, just you and he, unarmed, against the mob killers?”

“I was going because he’s got no-one else and he feels as though I’m wimping out, selling him out, wanting to come to you.”

“Well, Neal, I’ve got no-one else other than you, either, so let’s go and get your friend, shall we? You know where he is?”

“He won’t be there, now. Not after he told me and I mentioned you. But I think I know where he’ll go.”

“Well, I think I need proper pants, shoes and my gun!”

“And your car keys and your license to kill, Bond!” Neal grinned suddenly.

 

Peter pulled up into a patch of deep shadow about two-hundred yards from a rusty boat resting in its cradle by the docks. It looked literally ready to fall apart. Neal motioned for him to wait there, and slipped out of the car, not closing the door. He ran softly down to the ship and, taking up a piece of pipe, rapped a soft tattoo on the side.

Peter’s gut was yelling at him at the top of its voice and he capitulated. He pulled out his phone and called Robbie to get the team and meet him at this location, and to be ready for Vinnie and Fly and perhaps a few other trigger-happy miscreants. With that, he held Neal's door and drove down to the boat as the young man came out to meet Neal.

“You traitor!” he snarled at Neal, furious, and Peter got out of the car and said, “Look, let’s get you safe, we can trade insults later! I have a team of FBI agents descending on this place at any moment and I would guess you don’t want to be here for their arrival.  
..........“Therefore, I am going to tell them that I discovered that Neal stowed away in my car to see where I was going tonight, after I’d received an anonymous tip. So get in the car, don’t touch anything so I can’t get your fingerprints, and let’s get out of here!”

“Please, M – my friend!” Neal begged. “This is too nasty for you, and me, and even Peter – let the guys with lots of guns fight each other tonight. Peter’s a good guy, even if he’s a suit!”

The man (Peter could see now he was quite a bit older than Neal) thought a moment, disappeared, but reappeared wearing a coat and gloves and with a small suitcase that he handed to Neal, one large carpet bag and a briefcase he held onto, and they hurried over to the car and both got in the back. Peter heaved a sigh of relief and he did a rapid circle around the boat, spitting gravel, and headed back the way they’d come.

They were just driving up the incline when a large, dark, ominous American car came towards them and went on down towards the boat. The guy with glasses hissed at Neal and they both ducked down. “That’s them!” he told them.

“Lucky we got you out of there.”

“Yeah, I’m good now, though. Thanks. You can let me out anywhere around here.”

Peter glanced back in the mirror. “Seriously? They aren’t going to give up. They’ll keep coming.”

“Suit, I guess you mean well, but the last thing I need is to step out of the frying pan and into the fire, even though some changes are for the good,” the man said, as though it was a quotation, but Peter didn’t recognise it.

He countered with: " ‘It is not for me to change you. The question is, how can I be of service to you without diminishing your degrees of freedom?’”

“R. Buckminster Fuller,” the man nodded. “And a nice enough quote, but one I find sullied on the lips of a sworn servant of a government that spends the public’s resources and a great deal of bribes taken from Big International Corporations,” the capitals were obvious, “in doing exactly what you profess not to wish to do: diminish freedom. Not only mine.”

“Oh.” Peter knew a conspiracy theorist when he heard one. This one seemed even better educated than most, and just as prejudiced. “Do you have a moniker I can use that will not divulge your secrets?”

“You can call me Dante Haversham. Haversham will do.”

Peter took out his phone. “Sorry, Neal, here’s where I make out that you’re young, impulsive and slightly idiotic in order to help Haversham.” He dialled and said, “Robbie, I’m sorry – I had to get out of there, Neal was in the back of the car. Guess he thought it was an adventure. Too much danger, though, worst time he could pick to do it.”

He listened, and laughed. “Yeah, I’ll make sure he doesn’t try it again. You can see them? Right – be safe! Let me know what happens.”

“If you plan to punish Neal for trying to - ” Haversham sounded positively dangerous.

“I had to have some excuse for being there, and then leaving!” Peter said.

“You lied, Peter! For us!” Neal’s smile lit up the rear-view mirror.

“Oh, you and I are going to have a serious talk, Neal! Not about saving your friend, a perfectly natural response, but about keeping secrets throughout our time together.”

The smile dimmed. “Yes, Sir,” Neal responded, subdued.

They reached Peter’s street and he found a parking reasonably close by. “I would very much like you to accept our hospitality for at least a few days, or until we find Vinnie and his little group of thugs,” Peter said, twisting round to look at Haversham.

“I will keep out of their way, Suit. I have had run-ins with the mob before and prevailed.” He considered for a moment and added, “Handsomely.”

Peter sighed. “That is as may be, but Neal would worry about you and he seems inordinately fond of you, so I would ask you again…I promise I will tell no-one you are here – I have a feeling it would cause me to be liable to accessory after the fact or aiding and abetting, or some such!”

Neal giggled.

“Come on, let’s at least have some coffee inside where it’s warmer.”

“So long as I can wash my mug afterwards, so you don’t collect my DNA or fingerprints, Suit.”

“I’m quite happy for guests to help around the house!”

The three of them went inside and Haversham put down his things and went round closing curtains and blinds, still wearing his gloves. “Can’t understand the average American’s total lack of common sense,” he muttered.

“We feel safe, we average Americans, living in a free country as we do,” Peter said with a grin.

Haversham went back to his things and raised an eyebrow. “Freedom is an arbitrary concept to some. After all, ‘Those who do not move do not notice their chains.’”

Neal perked up. “Rosa Luxemburg?”

Haversham nodded, and Peter tumbled to the supplier of Neal’s reading list. He turned to his ward and said, “When did you think any of my house rules made it okay to consort with felons?”

“Typical. Rush to judgement,” Haversham said, disgustedly.

“Tell me you are gainfully employed.”

“Very gainfully.”

“I meant in the normal meaning of the word, with taxes and everything!”

“ ‘If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.’”

“I don’t know that one,” Neal said, bringing in the coffee.

“Does he always speak in quotes?” Peter asked Neal.

“ Anna Quindlen. You should read more. And no-one can put me away for repeating someone else’s thoughts – or they are less likely to try, Suit.”

“He’s safe here?” Neal asked Peter. “We can keep him here until they find this Vinnie?”

“As is usual, we never have anything concrete on the principal gang members, Neal. I am hoping that Vinnie, and his lieutenant Fly will feel that they are safe enough going after a single witness – they are both reported to really enjoy killing - and will turn up just in time for a shoot-out with the FBI team on the scene. That will put them inside.”

“You know as well as I that the only way to stop them is with a small piece of high-velocity lead, Suit,” Haversham pointed out. “Or similar irreversible means.”

“Yeah, they have lawyers by the dozen and lots of money to buy witnesses and power to frighten or do away with others. But if our people actually engage with them, that may be our best chance.

........“And I would very much like Mr Haversham to stay as long as he likes. Though there will  be more work for you, Neal – and take that as a reprieve, a very small consequence for all your deception and evasion over the years!”

“I think I should leave you,” Haversham said. “In part because I find the clouded air of Federal jurisdiction hard to breathe, and in part to draw danger away from my friend.”

“You can’t go, M- my friend!” Neal exclaimed. “You just got here! I don’t want to lose you. And you’ll have to run far to get away from these monsters and may not even then! It’s a huge risk.”

“ ‘There is no trouble so big it cannot be run away from’,” Haversham pontificated.

“No, I’m sorry,” Neal said, ruefully. “Don’t know that one, either.”

“Snoopy. You _really_ should read more!”

“The dog or the rap-star?”

“Dog. Can you imagine a rap-star saying that, Neal! It is interesting to note, though, that the rap star Snoop Dog’s original given name was Calvin. One of Life’s little jokes.”

“And after all, Mr Haversham,” Peter said, amused and a little aghast in equal measures at Neal’s first bring-home friend, “You are perhaps leading a potential threat away from our scent and taking them off to Bali or Kabul…but you leave Neal with a far greater and surer danger.”

“And that is, Suit?”

“Well, without the penalty of acting as a good host and doing extra housework to make your stay comfortable, I would have to take some action to punish Neal for all that deception and evasion!”

“I should have supposed that working for a Corporate American Tyrant would rub off on your personal life,” Haversham noted, sadly.

Peter gave Neal a Look, and said, “Actually, that aspect of my parenting rubbed off directly from my dad’s paddle and strap, which were very effective means of conveying his displeasure.”

Neal nodded, backing Peter’s play. “Please, Haversham – please stay. You don’t want me to be in trouble with Peter, do you? If he’s prepared to let me off if you stay here, I’d – I’d really rather we went that route. Please?”

Peter stared at Neal and groaned inwardly. He really was an accomplished little confidence trickster! That slight quaver of apprehension was perfect, not the slightest bit over-played.

“I feel I am being railroaded, but for you, Neal, I will stay a little while – if only to try and give you some real ideas of freedom, independence and success. But I have to find a place to stow my – er – personal belongings.”

“Your go-bag?” Peter asked, drily.

“My carpet-bag,” Haversham said, looking just a little puzzled.

Peter groaned again, this time aloud. Now he had two of them!

 

Peter received an update from the FBI team: they’d apprehended two of the mob muscle, but they knew at least two others had escaped into the night. Robbie was apologetic.

 

It was three o’clock early the next morning when Peter suddenly awoke. He was sure there was someone in the house. He collected his gun and slipped down the stairs, very aware that Neal could be wandering about, restless because of the happenings of the previous evening, and who knows what Haversham might be up to? _Let’s try not to shoot the first real friend Neal’s had, even if he is casing the joint or stealing the (non-existent) silver!_

Peter eased round the newel post and there, just inside, silhouetted against the back windows was a man much too large to be either Neal or his friend.

“FBI! Show me your hands!” Peter exclaimed, clicking the safety off. The man swung round, answered with a gunshot that sounded louder than any he’d ever heard, and though Peter’s gun immediately replied, the man crashed through the window and out into the yard.

Peter ran after him, but could see nothing in the shadow-filled little garden. He heard a sound at the front door and quickly moved back for cover, and saw Neal standing with his back to the wall, half-way up the staircase.

He hissed, “Get back! Call Robbie and 911 on my phone. Check on Haversham!” and ducked. He could see two shadows against the curtains and they were obviously going to try their luck – but then there was a sudden orange flare beyond them, outlining them perfectly, and they turned and left in a hurry.

Peter peered out cautiously. Then he stood up and looked more carefully. He pulled his coat off the hook, slipped his feet into his boots and rushed out, awkwardly juggling his gun (safety back on), trying to get his arms into the sleeves of his coat.

There was Haversham – it _had_ to be Haversham, even though he was wearing a too-long black trench coat and a large black hat over a black balaclava pulled down to hide his face - pointing a shot-gun at Vinnie and Fly. The thugs were standing looking both furious and bemused against the road side of the car Peter had seen before near the boat, hands on their heads, fingers locked. There was another car a little way away blazing angrily. Black smoke billowed into the sky, dimming the city lights. A body was sprawled in the middle of the road rather too near the car for safety if the tank caught.

The thugs’ guns were within a yard of Haversham’s feet.

Peter joined him, hearing him say in a broad Scottish accent that made Peter do a double-take, “You are in point of fact extrrremely lucky I pulled him from the car firrrst! And if you move, I’ll blow a hole in the both of you with nary the slightest qualm, because you are human rrrefuse of exceedingly low worth to society!”

Haversham – it had to be Haversham, from the height and build – continued, “And here indeed is the local Arm of the Law! Sandy Connelly, Highland Guarrrds Against Crrrime, at your service!” he said to Peter, and handed him the shotgun.

Peter kept it trained on the two and jerked his head at the body. “Just sleeping?”

“As innocent as he’ll ever be, indeed! And now we have the firefighters about to join us!” McHaversham noted, hearing the sirens. He reached down, careful not to block Peter’s shot, and retrieved the thugs’ weapons, which he stowed in the capacious pockets of Peter’s coat.

Neal calmly walked out of the house and went to the unconscious man and cuffed him behind his back with Peter’s cuffs and dragged him to a safer distance from the car. He said, “Back-up’s on the way, Peter.” Then he walked back inside.

Peter whispered, “Where’d you get the shotgun?”

“Boot of their fine Chrrrysler automobile,” ‘Sandy’ informed him, similarly. “And the brrruise on the back of that one’s head will perrrfectly match the butt of the thing.”

A police siren started up very close and Peter glanced over and then back, keeping his eyes on the two criminals.

The masked man was gone. Peter did another double-take, but he had vanished without trace.

 

Robbie, Joan and the team had taken the three mobsters into custody with delight, one rubbing his head and complaining about brutality. They had heard some garbled story from them at the scene as they were read their rights, and Peter had given them his gun and a short statement about a helpful member of the public, a break-and-enter and attempted murder and where was the forensic team?

Those worthies had eventually come and taken photographs and samples of one man’s blood found both inside and outside Peter’s house, messed up every surface near the back wall and around the front window with fingerprint dust – to no avail, all of them wore gloves - and a team of New York’s finest aided by a dog had chased the man from the back door across several blocks till they found him unhappily bleeding beside a dumpster. His weapon was in another dumpster nearer Peter’s house.

“All in all a very good night, Burke!” Peter’s new boss Hughes had said over the phone. “Get your house fixed up, and catch up on your sleep, I’ll see you tomorrow. You’re on administrative duty until the gun incident clears, anyway. Glad your boy isn’t too traumatised.”

“Thank you, Sir!” Peter said, relieved.

Peter dug in the basement for a half-sheet of plywood left over from the bookcase project and he and Neal screwed it over the opening once all the evidence and photos had been collected.

“If it takes that long to get rid of them when just one dude _just_ comes into a Federal Agent’s house and breaks out again, bleeding and obviously guilty, I’d hate to be merely an ordinary member of the public, murdered in my bed!” Neal remarked. “I’d lose weeks of sleep!”

Peter chuckled and said, “How ‘bout some breakfast and then some of that missed sleep?”

“I’ve got coffee started and you have eggs and bacon, so I started on that,” came a voice, and Haversham, sans coat, balaclava, hat and gloves – and accent – put his head out of the kitchen door. “I’m sure it’s full of nitrites and who-knows-what-other-toxins, but we all just dodged a lethal dose of lead, so might as well celebrate!”

“How on earth, Haversham - ?”

“How’d I get a drop on them?” he grinned. “Tell you over breakfast. You know what bacon’s like, you gotta watch it like a hawk when it gets to crisping.”

They were all eating and laughing, that feeling of relief after danger, when Peter asked Neal, “You came and made sure the man was no trouble? I should have stopped you getting so close to the burning car, but I was a little distracted by a masked Scotsman.”

“Yeah. Seen too many movies where the unconscious man wakes and sneaks up on someone.”

“You were awfully calm and cool,” Peter said, admiringly. “Thanks! You didn’t yell out when the gun went off, or anything.”

“Told you,” Haversham said, with obvious pride, “no noise, no matter what. Very seldom does yelling accomplish anything. Not never, but very seldom.”

Neal smiled and applied himself to his eggs.

“And how did you come up behind them, Haversham?” Peter asked, “if you don’t mind telling me – I’m so grateful. It was very brave, you could have just left and none of us would have been any the wiser! They’d have got away if you had.”

“I was coming back from…storing my things I won’t need while I’m here,” Haversham told him, “and I saw the car. Then there was another of their kind in a car a little further back, had probably followed us and was watching to see we were still inside.  
..........“So I opened the trunk silently and there were a few weapons. The man in the car had the window open to hear and was watching your house, his head turned, so I rammed the butt of the shot-gun into the back of it as hard as I could and dragged him out into the street. I found some rags and a can of gas…so I combined the two – that’s about when I saw the muzzle flashes and heard the two reports – so I lit the rags, (always have a book of matches!) threw it in the back and waited behind the van over the way there.  
...........“They ran over in horror, their car was a little too close for comfort, and I stepped out and told them to put their hands up, then throw their guns over and then lace their fingers. That’s when you, less than well-dressed but I wasn’t complaining, showed up to relieve me.  
..........“Glad I didn’t have to kill them. Not that it wouldn’t have been satisfying, but it might have become complicated if one or both had survived.”

Neal nodded. “Don’t like guns,” he said, round a piece of toast.

“Better in my hands than theirs,” Haversham told him.

“Where’d you get the accent?” Peter asked.

“Accent, Suit?”

Peter sighed and went on, “How’d you get into the trunk? And if they had men watching, how did you leave the house unseen – and why did you go in the middle of the night?”

“Night’s better. Dark. I also hoped that they would still be occupied with your Suit-squad, but obviously they had been ineffective. Trunk was easy to pick, and I’m naturally quiet. And Suit, Suit – I can be the Invisible Man when I choose.”

“Pity you didn’t see the goon watching the house when you drifted invisibly away,” Peter groaned. “You aren’t just homeless, are you…you truly are a complete criminal?”

“You Corporate-types really love your labels, do you not?”  
Haversham inquired. “I am not part of the commercialized society.”

Neal took a swig of coffee and said, happily: “ ‘Criminal: a humble artist always willing to sacrifice his fame for his freedom.’ "

Haversham chuckled and said, “Yevgeniy Dodis. Not bad, Neal! I’m impressed. I am willing to sacrifice nothing, though I admit I have no yearning for fame. Freedom is everything.”

There was a pause and Peter said, “I am truly very grateful, Haversham. You may have saved my life and maybe Neal’s, too. But if you are trying to recruit Neal into a criminal lifestyle, you and I are going to have a problem.”

“I am trying to recruit Neal into a **_life_** -style, Suit. Trying to make sure his brilliance is not wasted on banalities. After all, ‘it's amazing that curiosity survives formal education’, Albert Einstein said, and I doubt you are able, or have the time to save him from the very indoctrination to which you yourself succumbed.”

Peter realised that to argue with this biased point of view was futile.

Neal was watching him and said, quietly, “I have no real desire or need to commit crimes, Peter. But survival techniques are always valuable information. You grew up in a normal household. I didn’t.”

“So all those names you were working on? Your potential aliases?”

Neal gave a gurgle of laughter at this. “I did think if the painting thing doesn’t work out, I might try acting. I think I might like that.  
.......“I’m not keen on the name I’m saddled with – no, I like Neal, the so-called ‘official one’ – and if I paint or act I can take a stage name or a – is it a nom de plume for a painter as well as a writer?  
........“M-my friend has been training me in accents and some language basics, how to build a character using different walks, hand gestures and stances.  
........“He’s also an expert on many of the great painters and their techniques.”

Peter wiped his hand over his eyes. “I wonder why? No, don’t tell me any lies, Haversham!”

“Fine with me, Suit.” Haversham then remained silent.

“Okay, here’s the deal, you two,” Peter went on after a while. “I don’t want to know anything about your less-than-legal activities, Haversham. I probably should forbid Neal to ever see you again, but I doubt that would work, he wouldn’t obey and it would cause trouble between us. Or he’d run away. He was going to tonight – last night - this morning - coming to you on his own, giving up everything.  
.........“I trust Neal as I would my own son. He’s not only brilliant, he’s also got lots of common sense. So I’m trusting him not to join you in any criminal escapade. On the other hand, I’d really rather you didn’t get involved with nasty characters as you did the other day if it is at all avoidable.  
...........“I am pleased that you have done what you could to steer him towards good books and music and so on, and away from the usual stupid teenage illegal behaviour. I would like it if you could continue to help him with his artistic pursuits, languages, chess and other things I don’t have time, or sometimes the education, to do.  
......“In return, I will not look into your life and affairs and you are welcome to come and stay the night now and then or have a meal with us, and I will be polite and pleasant to you as long as you don’t bring contraband here, and as long as you can be polite to me.”

Neal was smiling his warm, loving smile, and Peter winked at him.

Haversham thought a moment and said, “That might be nice, now and then, Suit. I have become very fond of your son, he’s a very good and loyal soul and that’s rare even without the talent and genius. It would be my honour to help him.”

“And you agree not to lure him to the Dark Side?”

“On the understanding that one day we might have to have a debate on which of us is actually standing on the Dark Side, I will agree not to encourage any actions that may cause him to run afoul of you or the Evil Empire. I will not promise the same about his thoughts, however.”

“Close enough,” Peter told him, and they both stood and shook hands, and then turned and grinned at Neal.

“And Suit, you might as well call me Mozzie. Neal’s going to let it slip sooner or later, anyway!”

 

The next evening they were all sitting around the diningroom table, picking at the remains of a superb meal that Neal had put together with a little of Mozzie’s help: carpet-bagger steak as a nod to Mozzie’s luggage, lots of fresh vegetables and brown rice followed by lemon sherbet. They were all a little short of sleep, still, but very comfortable. This was in part due to the good food, and in part a very nice red wine that Mozzie had conjured up out of nowhere and of which even Neal had partaken.

“It may be a little dry for your taste right now, but get used to it, it’s a very good wine, I’ll tell you all about it when you’re less sleepy,” Mozzie explained.

“I like the colour,” Neal said, valiantly sipping and almost managing to not make faces.

Peter and Mozzie chuckled.

“I feel so different today, Neal,” Peter said, sitting back and wrapping his hand around his coffee. “I feel ten years lighter. I used to have – dreams? Feelings – about you. I guess it was my training, picking up on little things that didn’t fit. Somehow, even though I know you are indeed in a partnership and friendship with an arch-villain,” he tipped his mug to Mozzie, who tipped his wine glass back with a grin, “now it makes sense, and I know I can trust you.”

“What dreams?” Neal asked, slowly, his face very serious.

“Oh, darkness? Death. I saw you as a prisoner, in hand-cuffs, angry with me, hating me. Crazy stuff…But the darkness and death were for both of us – it may have been just a representation of your forsaken dreams – what? Neal?”

Neal had lost all his colour. “Peter! I used to have those same dreams. They started when that awful man was here.”

“Phil Kramer?”

Neal nodded. “I’d wake up in a sweat. At first it was just him chasing me, grinning hatefully, trying to catch me, not just him but a whole lot of people he was leading.  
.........“Then later the dreams got clearer and it was you chasing me. Then I was in a small room, with bars. Then you and I were together, but it wasn’t like now. It was – you were mean, shouting at me, accusing me, different things.  
........“And then I was in the dark, just like you said, and then you came, I knew it was you but I couldn’t see you…it was black, like in a b-basement…” his voice shook, and Peter wondered if someone had punished him by locking him in a basement.  
.........“I w-was tied to a chair, and there was this danger - ”

 _“Wait!”_ Peter exclaimed, sitting forward and putting his mug down with a bang, slopping some of the liquid over the edge. “You were tied to a chair – I walked in. I saw you, I stepped on some sort of trigger, it moved beneath my foot and snapped like a twig - there was a bomb, it exploded.”

Neal couldn’t go any whiter, so he became tinged with green. “I yelled –

 _ **“Time bomb!”**_   they both exclaimed together, gazing at each other.

“Ah, well,” Mozzie said, thoughtfully, “that explains a lot.”

Peter and Neal turned quickly. “What does it explain?” Peter said.

“Well, you said you knew me right from the beginning, Neal.”

“Y-yes. I _did._ It was like déjà-vu, or people who say they’ve found their soul-mate or something, it was quite odd. Or like twins say they feel about each other.”

Peter interrupted. “But – but I also knew you were going to be in the cabin, Neal. Not like a déjà-vu, I didn’t remember it _as_ it happened, it was as though I’d done it all before, but I’d frightened you away.”

“I knew I was very nervous in there, thought it was a reaction to the rash,” Neal said to him, puzzled.

Mozzie was nodding. “And our friendship has been an unusual one, Neal: you, here, under the guardianship of a Fed, me, well, all alone and free! There is enough of an age difference to make it unusual for us to connect at such a deep level for our ages. If we’d met later, it would not be so remarkable.”

“But how does that - ?”

“You say you yelled ‘time bomb’ – but Peter said he triggered the explosion. Therefore, it was not a time bomb, was it? In the sense of some sort of a clock attached to an explosive?”

“No…”

“So why did you shout ‘time bomb’, Neal?”

Neal sat back, his colour slowly improving. He said, slowly, uncertainly, “Someone told me it was. Said you’d come…you, Peter…but you weren’t my father. You weren’t even a friend, but I still knew you’d come for me. Sorry, it’s like a dream; I can just remember vague impressions more than details.”

Peter swallowed, hearing Neal all unconsciously calling him his father.

“There are stories…” Mozzie said. “I’ve read of a few cases of this sort of thing. Where there has been an ongoing problem that needs fixing. Mistakes that need fixing. They say – it is the hypothesis of some quite rational mathematical thinkers who have studied it – that it is a contrivance used by people of greater spiritual advancement _and_ technical ability than is usual. Some people say that they are not from this world, some say they are, but are more secretive even than my poor self.”

“I am not following,” Peter said. “It sounds insane.”

“Much less insane than leaving Neal to live the life you both … experienced, saw, whatever…for him, I think.”

“So what happened, exactly?” Neal asked, wanting to understand his friend, even though it did sound more preposterous than most of his theories.

“Normal bombs shatter space, leave time intact. But time is merely another dimension, for theoretical mathematical purposes and perhaps in practice as well. Well, someone set up a time bomb – not a bomb set to be detonated by a timer, but a bomb set to go off when the two of you were together, the two involved in a bad time-line, which shattered that time line so that you could start again.  
.........“But, as I have heard happen before, the participants sometimes can remember as dreams or strange visions, like a memory – which it is, of course, just a memory of a future that now neither of you will experience. If you ignore it, and do not write it down or record it, it will fade, I’m told.”

“That is, seriously, the craziest thing I have ever, ever heard!” Peter exclaimed.

“I didn’t say it was true. I said I’d heard of people with the same sort of memories or dreams. You do not need to accept it, but I think perhaps you were given the chance to fix your lives.”

“Rubbish!” Peter said, determinedly.

 

…................. ….............. …

 

Fifteen years later Mr. Neal Caffrey – they’d legally changed his name from his originally accepted birth name – had his first gallery showing, with the help of Peter’s wife, Elizabeth. Peter and El wandered round, eaves-dropping on the clientele, very proud, and Dante Haversham – his Corporation Sole name, he told them – was acting as Neal’s manager (unpaid and untaxed) and checking on the lighting and that no-one had unlawfully changed the price tags he’d put on the pieces, and adroitly avoiding photographers.

He was as much part of the family as Neal was in a sort of weird-eccentric-uncle way.

Neal, looking svelte and gorgeous, dressed in vintage Devore, silk shirt and tie, was nervously rubbing his hands together, and smiling shyly at the compliments and saying things such as, “Thank you. Glad you like it! It’s nice of you to say so.”

He’d done quite a lot of modelling – he’d worked hard on himself and had grown up fit and handsome - and more important, could create any ‘look’ the photographer or client wanted – and his small acting roles were beginning to attract the notice of influential people in the industry. He told Peter he wasn’t sure which he’d enjoy more, acting or painting, so he might as well do both for a while, and if neither panned out he’d use his degree and teach. He seemed happy and centred and he loved Peter and Elizabeth quite unreservedly.

He was dating a pretty and smart insurance investigator. He’d brought her home, finding it very funny to present someone formally to Peter – as opposed, he explained to him later, to taking him down to meet her in a rusty old boat! Peter liked her and Elizabeth went shopping with her and Mozzie quoted at her and she teased him back, so it looked like it might be a match in the end, though Neal warned Peter that he and El had given him very high expectations of the married state and he wasn’t going to rush into anything.

Peter was ensconced in the White Collar Division with a team he liked and trusted – Diana and Jones were both here tonight - and El was running her own gallery, to which this show was drawing favourable attention.

Mozzie had always remained in Neal’s life; they were in many ways as close as brothers. He had kept his promise and though Peter often wondered where he got his considerable resources, which he often subtly shared with Neal and the family, Peter also kept his promise not to look too closely at Haversham’s affairs. He was, Peter admitted, one of the really smart criminals. He truly wasn’t a felon: he’d never been caught, no one ever implicated him in anything, the Bureau had nothing at all on him! The Invisible Man indeed!

El hugged Peter’s arm excitedly and said, “We’re going to sell this out!”

“Not quite!” Peter grinned down at her.

Over in the one corner, where one of them would always be able to keep an eye on it, and rather aggressively marked:

**PROPERTY OF P. BURKE, FBI, ON LOAN, NOT FOR SALE!**

was a small watercolour called, “Turning Point” – a pretty little thing with lovely light effects on an autumn lake. Peter’s eyes returned to it often. Usually, he just enjoyed it and delighted in the fact that Neal had painted it for him with love. Lately, he was proud, since he had the first real work of a man he knew was going to be famous. Today, though, his thoughts kept casting back and he wondered what would have happened if he’d burst in on Neal that day and frightened him away.

Whenever he thought about that, he felt a terrible dark feeling, a despair, a sinking away as though everything he loved was dying, so he stopped. His Gut was justifiably legendary now, and he was sure he’d done the right thing.

 

 

The End

 

 

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